Lady of the Lake
by lookingforthestars
Summary: They just keep ending up here.


**Just a random little AU (it's not even really that AU, but whatever, fluff) about Waige getting together after Happy and Toby's wedding. Happy Scorpion Monday!**

The music was dwindling. The lights were off. Happy and Toby's magical wedding destination had turned back to pumpkin pie at midnight. That was it. All of it.

Tonight wasn't about her. But if she was allowing herself to be selfish, just for a moment, she could cop to her disappointment. She'd hoped...god, she didn't know what she expected. Walter had been nothing but indifferent to her since she entered the garage that morning. During the ceremony, she thought he was softening. Just a little. Just enough to look at her the way he used to.

But he'd disappeared halfway through the reception, not a word to her. Certainly not a goodbye, even though, short of dropping Ralph off, she really had no reason to be at the garage from this point forward. Walter had effectively cut her out of his life. She was persona non grata. Maybe in another fifteen years, he would forgive her like he had Cabe.

Paige supposed she should have expected this outcome. Walter granted her the deepest level of trust he was capable of, and she'd betrayed it. No matter her reasons, he wouldn't open himself up that way again. If he didn't trust her anymore, didn't want her anymore— _wow_ , that possibility stung—she at least hoped he wouldn't give up on all normals. He still deserved the love and acceptance he spent his entire life craving.

"Mom?"

Paige looked down, her eyes meeting Ralph's shoulders. She adjusted her gaze. Sometimes she forgot he'd recently hit a growth spurt. "Hey, sweetie. You about ready to go?"

"Here." Ralph extended a plain white envelope that she hadn't even noticed he was holding. "I'm supposed to give this to you."

"Oh." She took it, using her nail to loosen the flap. "Is it the bill?"

"No. It's from Walter."

Her hands faltered. "What?"

The sudden uptick in her pulse was ridiculous. She'd handled thousands of documents for Scorpion in her tenure. Walter had already furnished her initial severance check—the first check she'd ever considered ripping up instead of cashing—but this could be more of the same. A letter of recommendation. A form she'd neglected to sign during her transition. An announcement of his retirement from EQ development.

"I'll wait in the car," Ralph offered a bit too knowingly. She waited until he was out of sight to tear into the envelope and withdraw the paper inside.

It was none of those things.

* * *

No jazz was worth driving seven hours for.

If Paige had ever harbored doubts about Walter's true motives for driving to Lake Tahoe, alone, in the middle of the night, they were sufficiently quashed. Even with a change of comfortable jeans and a sweater, no traffic, and two stops for food and bathroom facilities, the trip seemed practically endless. She was surprised Walter hadn't cracked the cure for cancer on his way.

The sun was just beginning to rise, and the strings of white lights wrapped around the trees hadn't switched off yet. Ralph's directions were accurate to within roughly forty feet, but it still took Paige a second to spot Walter on a bench amid the park's early morning joggers and dog-walkers.

The genius didn't look so much surprised as confused when she sat down next to him, as if he didn't trust his own eyes. They'd both been awake for upwards of twenty hours and it wasn't completely out of the question that he might be hallucinating. She knew he'd had similar experiences when he used to stay up for days working on projects with Collins. "Paige?"

Now that she was here, the liaison wondered why she hadn't rehearsed in the car. "Hey."

"How did you…"

"You taught Ralph how to track your phone in cases of emergency, remember?" Paige tilted her screen so he could see the map, where his green dot and her red one were now overlapping.

Walter frowned. "Is this an emergency?"

"It was for me." She exhaled, putting her phone to sleep and slipping it back into her pocket. "Why did you come here, Walter? Of all places?"

He leaned back against the bench, brows furrowing as he stared straight ahead. "I don't typically attach sentimental value to locations. As you know. But this, uh…" Walter cleared his throat. "This seemed like an appropriate place to...process. M-Make peace. With everything."

 _And make me drive 440 miles to tell you what I would have told you at Kovelsky's._

But he'd done it for her.

Paige fished the letter out of her purse, twisting the corner of it between her thumb and forefinger. Walter glanced over at it and then dropped his gaze down to his clasped hands in his lap. "I assume you read my apology."

"Yeah. And I appreciate that, but it's not the part I came all the way here for. You said…" Her voice cracked and she tried again, a little quieter and less steady. "You said you love me, Walter."

Hearing it from a letter wasn't enough. Just like hearing it when he was hypoxic in space wasn't enough. He'd had no issue telling her to her face that love wasn't real, that their feelings needed to be buried, that she should be with Tim.

"Are you mad?" Walter scratched the side of his face, still struggling to look at her. "I was trying to spare us discomfort. Rejection of romantic interest is unpleasant for both parties a-and since I already, uh, anticipated that outcome, it seemed prudent not to put you on the spot. Although that could have been more easily achieved by not telling you at all, but I felt like you deserved an explanation for—."

"Walter," she sighed, cutting him off. He let out a relieved breath as his rambling died out. "What was your plan? To just hide out here forever? You were going to have to face me eventually."

"Yes. But at least this way you would have...plausible deniability."

 _You need to go to him. He's not able to do it on his own._ The only useful advice Ray had ever offered her. But she didn't know if she was capable of it, either.

"I don't want deniability, Walter. I want…" She bit her lip and swallowed. "I want to know if you meant it. And if you did mean it, I want to know what you want from me, because if you still think we shouldn't be together, like you always have, then I'd rather not say what I came here to say."

Now she was rambling. Walter met her eyes, finally allowing himself to consider the possibility that she hadn't traveled all night just to reject him more thoroughly.

He curled and uncurled the fingers on his right hand, fidgeting as he forced himself not to look away. "Yes. I meant it. I'm in love with you. And it's not…" The genius coughed. "Quite accurate to say that I've always thought we shouldn't initiate a relationship. When I followed you here a year ago, I was fully prepared to make that commitment. But you were, uh...committed...to someone else." Walter's forehead creased again, a mix of apprehension and optimism in his features. "Does you being here mean that my assumption was incorrect?"

Paige couldn't help it. She huffed out a laugh. He was offering her everything she'd wanted since perhaps the day she met Scorpion, and she couldn't remember the last time she had been so elated that it was hard to think straight.

"You are incorrect about a lot of things." She moved closer, reaching up to rest her hand on his cheek. "But yeah, especially about this. I'm in love with you too, Walter. And I'm still _really_ mad at you for firing me. Because I finally thought I was home. With Scorpion. With you."

The fear and uncertainty had melted from his expression, and now he looked...overwhelmed. "Really?" he asked after a moment.

"Yes, really. Are you gonna kiss me or not?"

When his lips met hers, it was absolutely worth driving seven hours for.


End file.
